The Toxicity of True Believers
by John Lawrence, December6, 2015
People believe things for a variety of reasons. If there are no facts, people will believe whatever they want probably with no or few consequences. But people will also believe the opposite thing even when facts are available. Sometimes this is harmless, and sometimes it's dangerous. For instance, Hitler spread the conspiracy theory that in fact Germans had not lost the First World War. Instead they were sold out by Jews and Social Democrats. Germans could be losers in contradistinction to the facts. Likewise, Donald Trump could not have lost the election despite the facts. What is scary is that a lot of Germans believed Hitler, and a lot of Americans believe Trump. There are also similarities with the Spanish Civil War which happened because Franco didn't accept the outcome of a democratic election, and a lot of Spaniards went along with him.
The problem is that Americans have not been taught by their educational system to think critically, to not accept something that isn't fact based as the truth. Instead, many people, especially those that are religious, are taught that it is more important to believe things which are unknown rather than take the attitude of skepticism until all the facts are in. How many times do the votes in Georgia need to be recounted before Georgians will accept the fact that Trump lost the election in Georgia? It's not hard to understand why the right wing of the Republican party is willing to believe Trump's lies in contradistinction of the facts. They are by and large the true believers of evangelical Christianity which maintains the belief that the essence of the Gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by faith or correct belief. Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or "born again" experience in receiving salvation, in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and in spreading the Christian message. In other words right wing religious Christians who are mainly Protestants, have firmly rooted belief systems. They have been taught that believing in something is more important than a rational consideration of the facts.
Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a study of the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Protestantism represented a shift from the social Gospel of Catholicism which maintained that doing good for others was the pathway to salvation to an ethic that believing was the way. Thus, if you believed correctly, you were more likely to get into heaven than if you believed incorrectly. Your salvation had nothing to do with helping other people. Therefore, you were free to profit financially without responsibility to anyone else. This is the essence of capitalism. But also it inculcates the belief that beliefs in and of themselves are more important than a rational assessment of facts.Some people would call this brainwashing. Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques and is said to reduce its subjects' ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values and beliefs.
People that are subject to brainwashing in the religious sense are also vulnerable to being brainwashed in the political sense. There have been true believers in communism, for example, as well as true believers in capitalism. When people haven't been taught how to think critically, they are vulnerable to becoming true believers in whatever some charismatic leader tells them whether it's a charismatic evangelist or a charismatic political figure such as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or Donald Trump. The fact that many of Trump's true believers numbering perhaps in the tens of millions believe him when he says that the election was rigged and that he really won the election and that the election results should be overturned represents a dangerous retreat from democratic values in the same way that Hitler's rise overturned the democratic values of the Weimar Republic. It is important to remember that Hitler came to power within the constitutional framework of the democratic Weimar Republic.
Hitler stood for Germany first just as Trump stands for America first. In Hitler's framework only true Germans, meaning non-Jews and non-immigrants should be allowed to exist in Germany. Similarly, Trump represents white Americans who are against immigrants and non-Americans who in their mind are everybody who is not a descendant of white Europeans. Trump is not giving up. His true believers have a profound belief that the election was rigged and that Trump really won despite the factual reality that he lost. Trump and his followers cannot accept defeat and losing. He has always disparaged losers of which, arguably, he is now one of them. Trump's strategy was to get his case considered by the Supreme Court of which he has appointed three of the Justices in the belief that they would remain loyal to him and overturn the results of the election. He has even broached the idea of declaring military law while appointing Trump loyalists in critical positions within the Pentagon. He is attempting in every way possible to create a coup d'etat which would result effectively in a Trump dictatorship and the end of democratic constitutionalism in the United States.